Thursday, June 23, 2016

New File Systems: Apple APFS, Windows ReFS

Contrary to HFS+, which uses 32-bit file IDs, APFS will support 64-bit inode numbers, which will allow to store over 9 quintillion files on a single volume.

Whereas HFS+ is bound to initialize the entire storage of a file system at once, APFS sports an extensible block allocator that enables lazy initialization of its data structure, thus hugely improving performance with large volumes.

APFS supports three models of encryption: no encryption, single-key encryption, and multi-key encryption to manage per-file keys and a metadata key.

Additional APFS features that improve on HFS+ are support for sparse files, improved TRIM operations, built-in support for extended attributes."

APFS also provides a few advanced features that put it in the same category as modern file systems such as ZFS,"Introduction @ Apple"Apple File System is a new, modern file system for iOS, OS X, tvOS and watchOS. It is optimized for Flash/SSD storage and features strong encryption, copy-on-write metadata, space sharing, cloning for files and directories, snapshots, fast directory sizing, atomic safe-save primitives, and improved file system fundamentals."